The Trump administration must face a trial next month over allegations that it used immigration powers to retaliate against foreign student protesters in a case that could test the outer bounds of constitutional protections for noncitizens involved in anti-Israel activism.

U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, ruled Monday that a lawsuit brought by academic groups, including the Harvard and New York universities’ chapters of the American Association of University Professors, will proceed to trial on July 7 in Boston. The plaintiffs said the administration used arrests, visa revocations, and deportation threats to punish “free speech” critical of Israel and U.S. foreign policy.

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Young denied the administration’s motion to dismiss the case and outlined what the trial will seek to determine. Speaking directly to the plaintiffs, Young said his task at trial will not be to review or reverse individual deportation decisions made since Trump returned to the Oval Office but to determine whether the Department of Homeland Security’s main objective was to suppress political speech or sincerely defend the country’s national security.

“What’s in the administrative record,” Young said Monday, “is a reference to regulations which say that the conduct, unspecified … embarrasses the foreign policy of the United States.”

He said the question of whether that justification served as cover for a coordinated crackdown on political expression must be addressed at trial.

Still, Young ruled that the plaintiffs must present evidence that the administration’s intent was not simply immigration enforcement but proof of viewpoint-based retaliation.

“The court must infer that they’re trying to chill the speech of your client,” Young said.

The Trump administration has leaned on 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C), a provision that grants the State Department discretion to remove noncitizens whose actions are seen as detrimental to U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have both invoked that authority in recent months amid campus unrest over the war in Gaza.

The lawsuit is backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Middle East Studies Association, and AAUP chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU. The plaintiffs have argued that the Trump administration used immigration enforcement as a tool to silence protest and dissent.

Among the most high-profile cases since Trump began efforts to remove certain foreign students is the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University who was arrested in March by a team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, some of them masked, days after co-authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed. Young questioned the manner of the arrest on Monday, asking, “Why so many officers? Why masks?” and requested documentation justifying the use of such tactics. DHS previously said an agency investigation found Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.”

Another plaintiff, Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident from Gaza attending Columbia University, was detained while attending a citizenship interview in Vermont. A federal judge granted him release last month, but he is still facing legal proceedings. DHS has pointed to law enforcement records indicating that Mahdawi has admitted “to being involved in and supporting antisemitic acts of violence” and had “an interest in and facility with firearms for that purpose.”

Plaintiffs in the Knight First Amendment Institute case have said arrests and removals on college campuses are part of a broader strategy to intimidate foreign nationals and chill political speech.

“The First Amendment means the government can’t arrest, detain, or deport people for lawful political expression — it’s as simple as that,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, said in March.

In a May hearing, Young questioned whether noncitizens possess the same “free speech” rights as U.S. citizens.

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“I’m not clear that noncitizens have … the full rights to free speech that a citizen has,” he said, suggesting the Supreme Court may eventually need to weigh in as well.

While the case does not seek to overturn any specific visa revocations or deportations, a ruling against the Trump administration could set new limits on how far the executive branch can go in policing the political activity of noncitizens in the United States.